When Dani is brutally murdered at the remote country house that she and her husband Ted are renovating, everyone suspects a patient from the local mental health institution, where Ted is a doctor. However, soon after the tragic killing, the suspect is found dead. A year later, Dani’s blind twin sister Darcy, a self-proclaimed psychic and collector of cursed items, pays an unexpected visit to Ted and his new girlfriend, Yana. Convinced that there was more to her sister's murder than people know, Darcy has brought with her the most dangerous items from her cursed collection to help her exact revenge.

ODDITY is a story I have wanted to tell my whole life. I grew up in rural Ireland in the 80s, where power cuts were regular occurrences. We lived in a bungalow with a long corridor running through the house connecting every room. On nights where there would be the threat of a power cut, the walk to my bedroom at the end of this corridor was a long, anxious journey lined with dark open doors. I would do my best to get to bed and fall asleep before the lights went out as I had a terrible fear of the dark. My parents owned a VHS rental shop in West Cork so my bedroom wall was covered in movie posters - nearly all horror. I had Chucky, Freddy Kruger, and Michael Myers waiting for me in my bedroom at the end of that long walk. More than once, their eyes looking down at me from the wall would be the last thing I’d see before the room would plunge into darkness.

I have made numerous short horror films and one feature film, but due to the nature of a plot or a location, I have never been able to capture this feeling of dread. This is where all the horror in ODDITY stems from. We see Dani and Yana both face this primal fear of being alone in the dark with morning hours far away. Long empty walkways and corridors to contend with. ODDITY is how I finally captured that forgotten fear of a child facing a long dark night ahead.

ODDITY is a character driven psychological thriller that slowly becomes a supernatural horror. My goal with ODDITY was to make a film that is unpredictable and hard to classify in the numerous sub genres of horror. It’s a revenge movie. It’s a haunted house movie. It’s a monster movie. It’s a thriller and a whodunit. ODDITY is my way of bringing all of these sub genres that I love together in one unique story that I hope encourages repeat viewings.

Like the long dark nights of the house where I grew up, another horror aspect of this story which interests me greatly is the idea of someone being more afraid of what comes after dying, than their own death. I was raised Catholic and was brought to mass every Sunday. When I think of my parents' now long-gone video shop, it was always the horror section I would spend my time in. I was allowed to watch everything - except anything featuring the devil. Ghosts, serial killers, killer aliens and monsters were all perfectly suitable, but anything featuring his dark majesty was off limits. This only made these films and this notion that Hell could be real all the more terrifying, as all these adults every Sunday seemed to believe that these things were real.

While the film doesn’t specify where in Ireland the story takes place, because I am from West Cork, I imagine it here, due to the mix of nationalities that appear in the film. My hometown of Bantry, where we shot the film - is a very peaceful and quiet town. There is a large part of the community here that is made up of people from all over the world. Jokes are often made that “that person is definitely on the run from something,” and this exact notion has bled into the script with the characters of Ted and Ivan.

I have also done my best to not anchor the story to any specific time. This is something that has always interested me as a filmmaker. Keeping the year during which a movie takes place vague works to unease the audience on a deeper level. I did something similar with my first film CAVEAT, and I was asked more than once if this was all taking place in someone’s head or even a purgatory of some kind, as the film was full of old props, but was somehow still modern. I wanted to maintain that quality with ODDITY.

When I made CAVEAT, my goal was to take horror tropes I loved and see if I could put my own spin on them. The spooky island, the creepy basement, haunted toys and a man in chains. With ODDITY, my goal is to bring new scares to the screen. As an obsessive horror fan I watch everything I can, and if I find that something has been done similar to what I am doing, I abandon my idea or improve upon it. I am determined to make something original. As someone that has loved horror films for as long as I can remember, I hope that ODDITY is a film that will be hard to ignore. -Damian McCarthy / Director 

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